Intellectual Ventures Responds to Public Radio Investigation

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Intellectual Ventures, the Bellevue, WA-based patent licensing and invention firm, has responded on its blog to a recent report by the influential public radio program “This American Life” that delved into the controversy around intellectual property rights—and specifically, the accusation that IV is a massive “patent troll” that uses its trove of intellectual property to extract money rather than adding anything constructive to the world.

It’s a very thoroughly reported take on this overall story, which is not a new one to the tech community, but will definitely have legs because of its detail, cast of characters, bombastic accusations, and secretive legal arrangements.

First, there’s no question that IV is a massive “non-practicing entity” for a lot of the patents it holds. It’s not making flash memory or mobile backup software, but holds intellectual property for those kinds of products and makes money by licensing the patents to others. And quite a bit of money, too—co-founder Nathan Myhrvold has said IV’s more than 30,000 patents have brought in $2 billion in revenue, with some $700 million last year alone.

Being an “NPE” is, of course, a pretty classic definition of a patent troll. And the “This American Life” reporters do a really good job of talking to patent experts about the history of the American patent system, particularly in software, where you can often find patents that claim ownership of the most basic behaviors in the Internet age.

This point gets to the main conflict at hand: overbroad patent claims and demands for licensing money pitted against the democratic strain in coder culture that values showing your work and sharing knowledge.

Intellectual Ventures has been pretty consistent in how it responds to these kinds of allegations, saying that it’s doing something very different in the field by trying to create a more robust, efficient, liquid market for intellectual property. Where a few big tech firms and lots of patent lawyers once ruled, IV sees itself as establishing a new middleman class that can essentially move around patent rights like so many other commodities.

That’s the tone conveyed in IV’s blog response to the “This American Life” piece. Under the headline “Disruption Invites Controversy,” IV says some of the characterizations in the public radio piece veered into absurdity, and missed the theme that IV sees underlying its existence: the shift to a dramatically different market for patents.

“Many of the world’s leading technology companies are now beginning to recognize that patents are actually strategic assets that can be worth billions of dollars,” IV wrote. “This evolution in perspective is another crucial step toward an efficient market for inventions, and we are proud to have contributed to it.”

It was pretty easy to pinpoint the exact spot where IV got into real hot water with this particular report. The public radio reporters asked IV for an example of some inventor that the firm has helped, to buttress the company’s do-gooder claims. Intellectual Ventures offered up … Next Page »

5 responses to “Intellectual Ventures Responds to Public Radio Investigation”

Call it what you will…patent hoarder, patent troll, non-practicing entity, etc. It all means one thing: “we’re using your invention and we’re not going to pay”. This is just dissembling by large infringers to kill any inventor support system. It is purely about legalizing theft.

Prior to eBay v Mercexchange, small entities had a viable chance at commercializing their inventions. If the defendant was found guilty, an injunction was most always issued. Then the inventor small entity could enjoy the exclusive use of his invention in commercializing it. Unfortunately, injunctions are often no longer available to small entity inventors because of the Supreme Court decision so we have no fair chance to compete with much larger entities who are now free to use our inventions. Worse yet, inability to commercialize means those same small entities will not be hiring new employees to roll out their products and services. And now some of those same parties who killed injunctions for small entities and thus blocked their chance at commercializing now complain that small entity inventors are not commercializing. They created the problem and now they want to blame small entities for it. What dissembling! If you don’t like this state of affairs (your unemployment is running out), tell your Congress member. Then maybe we can get some sense back in the patent system with injunctions fully enforceable on all infringers by all inventors, large and small.

I don’t like Patent trolls, but I understand IP pretty well, and there is much confusion on who is a Patent troll/ NPE. Sadly, I doubt the writer (and many others) clearly grasps what IP is all about. Patents are not a license to make stuff!! They are a brief privilege in return of full disclosure, and in fact are meant to help the poor guy with no resources to manufacture or set up a factory. Unfortunately big business has hijacked IP, sort of. So, most are filed years b4 the technology becomes mainstream, which causes people to question how certain principle is claimed to be protected by a Patent because these people are only familiar with the technology, not when it entered the market(most often they can’t tell you definitively a date when such technology entered into the public domain, but are quick to throw accusations). Thats not to say there aren’t extremely crappy Patents out there..there are. Loads! In the end you couldn’t possibly be smart, and make your money, legally, and by sheer hard work, intellect, spark of genius, knowing the right people (or any one or more of the these), without awakening an army of one or more of : (i) idlers untalented at nothing, who meddle in things they don’t understand (ii) ignorant fools with nothing better to talk about(iii) scribes, blown about by the newest controversy / popular sentiment (iv)failures with no dream / vision and an excuse of a life…